G. P. Morris, song
Writer.--George Perkins Morris
(1802-64) is also to be numbered among the conspicuous literary figures
of the earlier portion of the century in New York and is to be numbered
among the most admired of American song writers. In early life he moved
to New York, and at the age of fifteen was a contributor of verses to
the newspapers of the city. At twenty-one, with Woodworth for a partner,
he established the "Mirror," a literary weekly journal, which
he continued until 1855, when, associated with Willis and Hiram Fuller,
he began the publication of the "Evening Mirror." At the close
of 1845 he established the "National Press," changed in
November of the year following to the "Home Journal," a highly
successful society weekly, which he edited with Mr. Willis until a short
period before his death, at the age of sixty-two. General Morris edited
a number of works, including "The song-Writers of America,"
and, in conjunction with Willis, "The prose and Poetry of Europe
and America." In 1825 he wrote a successful drama, called
"Briar Cliff," founded upon events of the American Revolution,
from which he derived $3,500 royalty. He was the author of the libretto
of Charles E. Horn's opera, "The Maid of Saxony," and a volume
of prose sketches published in 1836, but it is chiefly as a song writer
that Morris s best remembered. Some of his lyrics, such as
"Woodman, Spare that Tree," and "Near the Lake Where
Drooped the Willow," are compositions of which any poet might be
proud. An evidence of the great popularity of Morris as a poet is the
fact that for many years he could exchange one of his sons unread for
$50, when none of the other literatti of New York could sell a poem for
the fifth part of that amount. Between 1838, the year in which he
published "the Deserted Bride and Other Poems," and 1860, when
the last edition of his poetical writings appeared, several collections
of his songs, ballads, and poems were issued by New York publishers, His
military title came from his connection with the State militia.

Morris himself declared in 1862 that in his opinion the three most
popular American sons were: Payne's "Home, Sweet Home,"
Sargent's " A Life on the Ocean Wave." And "Woodman,
Spare that Tree"; and alluded to the pleasure he had received from
hearing from the older Russell, who composed the music for his own an
Sargent's poem, sing them, and also Sir Henry Bishop's arrangement of
"Home, Sweet Home." "But," added the poet, "no
one ever sang Payne's lines like Ann bishop." When Morris was asked
if his song was founded on fact, he replied that it was, and the account
given of it is contained in a published letter, written by the poet,
dated New York, February 1, 1837.

Before the middle of the last century a member of the British House
of Commons, closed a long speech in favor of protection by quoting
"Woodman, Spare that Tree"; the "tree" according to
the speaker from Yorkshire, being the "constitution," and Sir
Robert Peel the "woodman," about to cut it down. The incident
pleased Morris, for it showed the universality of the appeal in his
verses. He lived usually at Undercliff, on the banks of the Hudson, near
Cold spring; making trips to or from New York by the steamer
"Powell."

Hoffman, Last of the "Knickerbocker" Authors.--Charles
Fenno Hoffman, (1806-1884), thought he suffered for thirty-four years
from a mental disorder that obliged him to live in retirement, was one
of the most generally admired of the group of Knickerbocker authors. As
a song writer he stands among Americans second only to Morris; and some
writers have been of opinion that his lyric, "Sparkling and
Bright," is unsurpassed by any similar production in the language.
Few American martial poems, produced even during the War of the
Rebellion, surpass Hoffman's spirited lines on the Mexican battle of
Monterey, which was greatly admired by both Grant and Sherman. During
the war these great soldiers sometimes called on a young cavalry officer
to repeat them, and also to sing, at the siege of Vicksburg and
elsewhere, Bayard Taylor's spirited "Song of the Camp."

Hoffman, as a boy of eleven, was seated one day on the Cortlandt
Street dock, with his legs hanging over the wharf, as the ferry came in.
The boat caught one of his legs and crushed it so badly as to render
amputation above the knee necessary. At fifteen he entered Columbia
college, after preparation at the Poughkeepsie Academy, and six years
later was admitted to the bar. To his "Knickerbocker Magazine"
he contributed a series of letters descriptive of a tour in the
Northwest, which were collected and published in 1834, entitled "A
winter in the West." This work was followed by "Wild Scenes in
the Forest and Prairie," and in 1840 by the "Romance of
Greyslaer," founded on the criminal trial of Beauchamps for the
murder of Colonel Sharpe, of Kentucky, which also furnished the theme
for Simm's novel of "Beauchamps." Hoffman also issued several
volumes of poetry, and it is as a lyric poet that he is best known to
the world. In this field he is admittedly entitled to take high rank.
Among the favorites which made his name widely known may be mentioned
"Rosalie Clare," "Tis Hard to Share her Smiles With
Many," "The Myrtle and Steel," "Room, Boys,
Room," and "Rio Bravo: A Mexican Lament."

Of the large number of literary men present at the famous dinner
given to authors at the City Hotel, March 30, 1837, by the booksellers
of New York, Hoffman was the last survivor. During the forty-seven years
he outlived that memorable evening, he saw pass away, among others who
were present: Chancellor Kent, Colonel Trumbull, Albert Gallatin,
Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, James K. Paulding, William
Cullen Bryant, George P. Morris, William l. Stone, Edgar A. Poe, John W.
Francis, Orville Dewey, Matthew L. Davis, Charles King, and Lewis
Gaylord Clark.

"Hoffman." remarked a London literary journal during his
lifetime, "belongs to the front rank of American authors";
adding, "his plume waves above the heads of all the literary men of
American a cubit clear." While filling a government position at
Washington, he was in 1850 attacked by a serious mental disorder, from
which he never recovered. He died in the Harrisburg Asylum, in
Pennsylvania, of which he had been an inmate for thirty-four years, June
7, 1884. He was not a graduate of Columbia College, which he left in his
junior year; but at the semi-centennial celebration of its
incorporation, he received the honorary degree of A. M., conferred on
him in company with Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and William
Cullen Bryant.

Nathaniel Parker Willis.--Nathaniel Parker Willis (1807-67),
for many years the most talked of among American authors, was a native
of Portland, Maine, the birth place of Seba Smith, John Neal and Henry
W. Longfellow. His father and grandfather were publishers, the
grand-father having been an apprentice in the office with Benjamin
Franklin, and a member of the famous "Boston Tea-party." He
was graduated from Yale College, and began his literary career by
winning a prize of fifty dollars offered by the publishers, of an
illustrated annual. Willis spent several years in Europe, where he wrote
"Pencillings by he way," for his "New York Mirror,"
and before his return to New York in 1837, he married an English lady,
and fought a duel with Captain Marryat. Having lost his wife, Willis, in
1843, married the only daughter of Joseph Grinnell, and soon after
established, with Morris, the weekly, "The Home Journal." To
its columns he contributed for nearly a quarter of a century, much of
the material afterwards embodied in some two score of duodecimo volumes.
He published, in 1856, "Paul Fane," a novel, and he was also
the author of several plays and various volumes of poems, issued between
the years 1827 and 1860. May of his sacred poems have found a place in
the popular collections, some in hymn-books. Willis lived for the last
twenty years of his active literary life, except for occasional health
trips to the tropics, and to the southern and western States, at his
place called Idlewild, a picturesque mansion admirably situation on a
plateau north of the Highlands, and within sound of the guns of West
Point. There it was that after battling bravely for existence for many
years, he at length fell a victim to consumption, on the sixtieth
anniversary of his birth, and was laid at rest by the side of his
mother's grave in Mount Auburn.

Poe in New York.--Though a good deal of the literary life of
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was spent in Philadelphia, and in other
centres remote from New York, his later years were in large part spent
in New York, where his wife died, and where he wrote some of his
best-known compositions. He was born in Boston, the son of David Poe and
his wife, Elizabeth, members of the theatrical profession, who both died
in the South soon after Edgar was born. When a child Edgar was adopted
by John Allan, a wealthy citizen of Richmond, who sent him to England to
be educated. Poe afterwards entered the University of Virginia, where he
excelled in his studies, but from which he was expelled for gambling. He
was a year afterwards admitted into the Untied States Military Academy
at West Point, from which he was also expelled at the expiration of ten
months.

Poe entered upon his literary career by winning two prizes of $100
each, offered by a Baltimore publisher in 1833. Five years before he had
published in Boston, "Tamerlane and other Poems," a copy of
which was sold in 1892 for $1,850, and later for $2,500. Through the
influence of John P. Kennedy he obtained the editorship of the
"Southern Literary Messenger." While in this position he
marred his cousin, Miss Virginia Clemm, with whom he moved to New York.
Here he made a precarious living by writing for the magazines, and
published "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," and created he
modern school of short story writing. The following year he became
editor of "Burton's Gentleman's Magazine"; in 1840, of
"Graham's Magazine,' published in Philadelphia; and in 1845, having
returned to New York, he published his poem, "The Raven,"
which made him famous. He next became editor of the "Broadway
Journal," but was so poor that public appeals were made in his
behalf by the newspapers. A letter addressed at this time to Fitz-Greene
Halleck by Poe shows his position very clearly:

New York, December 1, 1845.

My dear Mr. Halleck:--On the part of one or two persons who are much
embittered against me, there is a deliberate attempt now being made to
involve me in ruin by destroying the "Broadway Journal." I
could easily frustrate them but for my total want of money and of the
necessary time in which to procure it; the knowledge of this has given
my enemies the opportunity desired. Emergency--without the leisure to
think whether I an acting improperly--I venture to appeal to you. The
sum I need is one hundred dollars. If you can loan me for three months
any portion of it, I will not be ungrateful.

Truly yours,

EDGAR A. POE

In 1849 Poe's wife died, after which he went to Richmond and there
formed an engagement with a lady of fortune; but before the day
appointed for their marriage Poe became ill, was taken to the hospital,
and died there. His grave remained unmarked till 1875, when the school
teachers of Baltimore placed a monument over it. On May 4, 1885, the Poe
Memorial was unveiled in the Poet's Corner of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York. It was dedicated with appropriate ceremonies, in the
presence of a notable gathering of authors, actors, and artists. It is a
curious fact that Fitz-Greene Halleck, chiefly through the efforts of
his biographer, and Edgar A. Poe, by the liberality of the members of
the theatrical profession, to which his parents belonged, secured their
memorial statutes and bas-reliefs in Central Park before Bryant, Cooper
and Irving.

Poe's works in prose and verse were collected after his death and
published with a memoir by Dr. Griswold. Afterwards his life was written
by Mrs. Whitman, to whom he is said to have been engaged, and by Richard
Henry Stoddard, William F. Gill, John H. Ingram, and George E.
Woodberry, all of whom viewed his character more favorably than did
Griswold.

Figures of Our Augustan Literary Age.--These were some of the
representative figures in a notable age of American literature. A high
English authority mentions Bryant as one of the most eminent of
English-speaking poets, who has written one of the noblest poems in the
language. Dana, Halleck, and Longfellow looked up to Bryant as to a
master. Whitman placed Bryant at the head of American poets. Dickens
admired Halleck above all other American poets, with the exception of
Irving. Samuel Rogers declared that two or three of Halleck's
productions surpassed anything that the had seen from the New World, and
Alfred B. Street asserted that he would rather have been the author of
Halleck's six best poems than of any other half dozen written by an
American. Poe, the next of the Knickerbocker trio of poets, is placed by
competent authorities among the greatest. To quote one critic: "In
the regions of the strangely terrible, remotely fantastic, and ghastly,
Poe reigns supreme."

It might be doubted whether the prediction will be verified that few
American writers of the first fifty years of the nineteenth century were
destined to last another fifty years, wrote General James Grant Wilson,
towards the close of the century. We do not believe that the productions
of Bryant and Cooper, of Halleck and Irving, of Drake and Edgar A. Poe,
and the other principal Knickerbockers, will be forgotten in the year
1943. On the contrary, we have the faith believe that at least a portion
of their writings, together with those of Bancroft and Emerson, of
Hawthorne and Holmes, of Longfellow and Lowell, of Prescott and
Whittier, will successfully endure the test of a much longer period;
that "upon the adamant of their fame, the stream of Time beats
without injury."

A few of the many minor authors who, in prose and verse, contributed
to the "Knickerbocker Literature," during the first half of
the present century, are still among us wit their "locks of grey";
but the great majority, crowded with years and honors, have passed away
to join the "dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule over out
spirits from their urns." These writers were the brilliant pioneers
of American literature; for the only professional authors of the New
World who preceded them were Joseph Dennis and Charles Brockden Brown.
Many voices have followed Bryant and Cooper, Halleck and Irving,
Paulding and Verplanck' but we shall not forget the forerunners who rose
in advance of their welcome in what Bacon beautifully calls "the
great ship of Time."

Notwithstanding the prevailing fashion among many recent writers to
underrate and sneer at the "Knickerbocker Literature," it
would seem, in the writer's judgment, that Irving, Bryant, Poe, Cooper,
and their comrades certainly contributed at least no less to the
literary glory of their native land than have Prescott, Emerson,
Hawthorne, Longfellow, and their New England contemporaries. When a very
great man was asked by the author for his opinion on this point he
answered" "They cannot be compared, any more than you would
compare the commerce of the city of Boston tot hat of your great
metropolis."

The Civil War, of course, involved a cessation of literary activity,
but upon its close, there were many who dropped the sword to resume the
pen, among the most useful of the New Yorkers being James Grant Wilson,
from whose history an excerpt has just been quoted. It was not until
1865 that William Dean Howells returned from his consulate at Venice to
join the staff of "The Nation,' where he remained until tempted to
Boston by an offer from the "Atlantic Monthly" a year later.
The Bohemianism o New York's literary set did not appeal to Mr. Howells,
who none the less described it fairly, contrasting it with his
associations in New England, where Longfellow was still in his prime,
though Emerson had entered upon his twilight. The New Yorkers were, in
fact, given too much beer and talk at places like Pfaff's, while the New
Englanders gave tea parties, although there was always good wine at Mr.
Longfellow's dinners. There was no acknowledged rivalry for literary
supremacy between New York and Boston, rather a frank attitude on the
part of the transcendentalists of superiority at which the New Yorkers
professed amusement.

But Mr. Howells in shaking the dust of New York from off his feet did
not burn his bridges. A decade later he was contributing to
"Harper's Magazine," preparing the way for his brief
editorship of the "Cosmopolitan," and his long occupancy of
the "Editor's Easy Chair" in "Harper's." With his
return to New York, New England's rivalry was at an end. The greater
part of Mr. Howells vast array of books were written in New York, and
before he had become known as "the Dean of American letters,"
he was the Nestor of New York's literati.

Brander Matthews, who had come from New Orleans, to Columbia and was
admitted to the bar in 1873 in New York, turned to literature
immediately thereafter. Alone comparable to Mr. Howells in the volume of
his literary output, his association with Columbia as one of the
professors of literature from 1892 gave him a formative influence as
great as Mr. Howells exerted through his editorships. Although his
original works might fall short of those of either Howells or Matthews,
if measured on a five foot shelf, Rossiter Johnson, who had been
associate editor of the Rochester "Democrat" before coming to
New York was destined to become New York's foremost editor of books and
encyclopedias. In 1869 he was made associate editor of the American
Cyclopedia, and he has been responsible for more sets of books ranging
up to forty volumes than nay other American.

But while the commanding position of New York as a publishing center
eventually made it as attractive to authors as the candle to the moth,
not all were content to look upon it as an abiding place. Bret Harte,
greatest master of the short story after Poe, preferred to live in
London. Mark Twain, although a resident of the city off and on for many
years, liked Hartford, Connecticut, best of the many places in which he
lived and worked. In spite of all temptations, James Branch Cabell
remains a Virginian. On the other hand, Theodore Dreiser has lived in
New York by choice for more than half his life, and could not be pried
away.

It is not possible to list al the authors who have regarded New York
as their home, or who have tried, with more or less success, to limn in
words certain phases of its teeming life. Among the writers who made New
York their home in the early eighties were Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen,
George Cary Eggleston, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Parke Goodwin, John R. G.
Hassard, Charlton C. Lewis, Jonas M. Libbey, William S. Mayo, Richard
Grant White, Edward L. Youmans, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Henry James,
Henry A Beers, George H. Booker, Charles Dudley Warner, Frank R.
Stockton, Irving Bacheller, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Laurence Hutton,
Bronson Howard, Samuel S. Conant, Hamilton Wright Mabie, John Hay,
General Horace Porter, Charles de Kay, Edward Eggleston.

Among the more recent authors who have sought to portray New York
life are to be noted H. C. Bunner, long one of the editors of the now
defunct "Puck"; Robert Chambers, Richard Harding Davis, David
Graham Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, Kathleen Norris, Burgess Johnson,
Edith Wharton, Arthur Train, Ernest Poole, Abraham Cahan, O. Henry
(Sidney Porter), Anne Nichols.

The two most important literary organizations ion New York in 1927
were the Authors' League of America, an offshoot of the Incorporated
Society of Authors, Playwrights and Composers, founded in London by Sir
Walter Besant; and the Authors' Club. The Authors' League, which has a
membership of several thousand, devoted itself to the problems arising
between author and publisher, ethical matters, and copyright. It has
made continuous efforts for several years to force the enactment of a
copyright law which would enable the Untied States to enter the Berne
Convention, by extending to foreign authors the rights sought for
American authors abroad, and to correct other defects in the faulty
copyright law of 1909. The Authors' Club, founded in 1882, with a
membership of nearly 300 in 1927 established itself in that year in its
own home. It is custodian of an endowment of $250,000 created by Andrew
Carnegie, the income of which is devoted to the relief of needy authors
or their dependents. In 1927 the president was John Erskine, professor
literature at Columbia, poet and author of "The Private Life of
Helen of Troy," and "Sir Galahad."

It seems essential before closing this chapter on New York as a
Literary center, to review in brief the periodical press, in which, and
in daily and weekly newspapers, most of the best work of New York's
authors appeared prior to book publication. It is also well to bear in
mind that a majority of the editors named in connection with these
magazines were also authors, and often journalists as well. The first
attempt at periodical literature in New York was that of Charles
Brockden Brown, in 1799, who then issued the "New York Monthly
Magazine." Its life was brief, but in 1822 the "New York
Monthly Review" made its appearance, under conditions more
favorable to success. Its early issues were called the "Atlantic
Magazine," a title which was to be made use of later in Boston.
Both Robert C. Sands and William Cullen Bryant were contributors to the
"New York Monthly Review," which soon found lively competition
from "The New York Mirror," of which Nathaniel P. Willis was
editor from 1823 to 1842. C. F., Hoffman founded the "Knickerbocker
Magazine" in 1830, which continued until 1860.

The oldest New York magazine, which has survived is "Harper's
Monthly," which began publication in 1850. From 1869 until his
death in 1919, this magazine was dominated by Henry Mills Alden. Mr.
Alden, who was a descendent of John Alden, had been managing editor of
"Harper's Weekly" from 1863 until he accepted well earned
promotion. Of the thousands of literary men and women with whom his
life's work brought him into intimate contact, it is probably that his
wisdom and his kindliness were never questioned save by one--Lafcadio
Hearn.

"Scribner's Monthly" was first issued in 1870, but upon a
disagreement between the editors and publishers, quickly became
"the Century," and as such prospered under the joint
editorship of Richard Watson Gilder and Robert Underwood Johnson for
many years. In 1887 Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons revived the title of
"Scribner's Magazine," and these three publications with the
"Atlantic Monthly," edited by William Dean Howells, in Boston,
known in the publishing trade as "the Big Four,' probably did more
to encourage authorship and to inculcate a love for good reading in the
American public than any of their epoch. All were profusely and
expensively illustrated except the "Atlantic," giving rise to
a school of engraving referred to in the chapter on Art and
Architecture. Al in the New York group were, because of their liberality
toward art, injured for a time by the invention of the photo-engraving
process for reproducing illustrations.

This revolutionary process, by which it ultimately became possible to
place before the public pictures of news events within an hour of their
occurrence, was utilized fist by Frank A. Munsey in "Munsey's
Magazine." A page illustration in a magazine by this process cost
less then the composition of a page by type, and the public liked it.
"Munsey's" reached a circulation in excess of 600,000, soon
after its establishment in 1891, and "McClure's," which was to
undertake "muckraking" on an elaborate scale, proved a close
rival from 1893, and was illustrated in the same manner. Under the
editorship of Robert Hobart Davis, from 1904, "Munsey's"
became the patent of a group of fiction magazine devoted to the genre of
the happy ending, which exerted such power that Rudyard Kipling was
obliged to devise a sweetly pretty final chapter of the "Light That
Failed."

"McClure's" not only published Ida M. Tarbell's
"History of the Standard Oil Company," but by its success
brought about the establishment in 1906 of the "American
Magazine," of which she was associate editor, and to which most of
the radical group of writers contributed; and "Ridgeway's,"
which ran up to a million circulation during the publication of Tom
Lawson's "Frenzied Finance." The "American," which
had hard sledding as an exponent of radical reform, prospered as the
creator of the "success" type of biographical articles, to
which Dr. Marden devoted his magazine called " Success"; but
finance declined to carry "Ridgeway's" through the panic of
1907.

"The Bookman," a first a publisher's house organ, then a
literary magazine, issued by George H. Doran & Co., started upon an
independent career at the age of Thirty-two in 1927, under the
editorship of Arthur Burton Rascoe. The "Review of Reviews,'
founded by Albert Shaw as an American companion to William T. Stead's
London publication of the same name, appeared in 1891. Stead and his
magazine died, but New York's "Review of Reviews" and its
editor were still flourishing in 1927.

"The Smart Set," founded by Colonel Williams d'Alton Mann,
inventor of the Mann Boudoir Car, and publisher of "Town
Topics," passed upon his death of Henry L. Mencken and George Jean
Nathan, who sold it to the Hearst interests in 1924, to become editors
of the "American Mercury," published by Alfred a. Knopf.
"Harper's Bazaar," first of the great American group of
magazines devoted exclusively to women, although a brilliant success in
earlier days, languished under the later Harper's management, but was
purchased by Hearst and attained a greater circulation than ever. The
"Cosmopolitan," founded by John Brisben Walker in 1889, also
passed to Hearst control, and was merged with "Hearst's
Magazine." "The Forum," founded by ex-governor Roswell P.
Flowers, was edited in 1927 by Dr. Henry Goddard Leach. "the North
American Review," founded by Allen Thorndike Rice, reached its
zenith under the editorship of George B. Harvey. "The International
Studio," founded by John Lane, the London publisher, passed to the
ownership of Hearst. "Everybody's Magazine" continued to be
published as part of the "Adventure," "Delineator,"
"Designer' group.

This chapter would be extended beyond all reasonable compass if it
undertook to list the many mail order, class, professional and fiction
magazines which have been or are now published in New York.

No attempt will be made to reproduce a list of the book publishing
houses, even in New York City. The oldest, of course, is Messrs. Harper
Brothers, who celebrated their centennial in 1917. James and John
Harper, both practical printers, went into the publishing business in
March, 1817, in a little room on Dover Street, and took in as
compositors their two younger brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher. All
four worked on the composition of their first book, which was
"Seneca's Morals," of which they printed for Evert Duyckinck,
then a bookseller at 68 Water Street, 2,000 copies. Second in point of
antiquity is G. H. Putnam's Sons, which was the first New York house to
open a branch in London. In 1927 the largest house in New York, its
output being considerably in excess of a book a day, was the MacMillan
company, originally a branch of the MacMillans, Limited, of London.

The growth of the publishing industry is, however, as striking as
that of the city itself. The combined population of the territories now
embraced in the greater city as the borough of Manhattan, The Bronx,
Brooklyn, Richmond and Queens, in 1790, according to the United States
census for that year, was 49,401, of whom 33,131 lived in Manhattan.
Bradford brought his press to New York three years later. In 1927 the
printing trades in New York City employed 32,00 men, exclusive of
editors, authors, writers, artists, etc. The minimum wage of an ordinary
compositor was then $55 for a forty-four-hour week, and this being fifty
one per cent higher than in New Jersey, and 100 per cent higher than in
some cities, a large part of the books for publishers, and the bulk of
the periodicals were manufactured outside of the city. But to quote the
United States census figures for 1925, the value of products of the
printing and publishing manufactures in that year in the city alone was
$600,096,484. This was about one-fourth of the total business in these
lines for the whole of the United States and dependencies.

The History of New York State,
Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1927